


you don't have to trust me, you just gotta give me a try

by hunterwho



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Adoption, Family, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Past Child Abuse, dave gets adopted, found family fic because it works!
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-08-12
Updated: 2020-11-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 00:01:21
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,101
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25864027
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hunterwho/pseuds/hunterwho
Summary: Dave's adopted by Alpha Dave: the fic. AKA: "this kid has trauma and he's gonna find someone who understands and loves him, goddamnit!"
Relationships: Dirk's Bro | Alpha Dave Strider & Dave Strider
Comments: 12
Kudos: 20





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> what is UP i am BACK! it's been, like, a year since i last posted on here, which i apologize for. hopefully this fic will help get me out of my writer's-block slump and get me back to posting regularly. for now, enjoy!

Dave rode to his new legal guardian’s house exactly like he had for the past five: playing a mindless game on his phone, passively bouncing one of his legs, sprawled across the backseat of the agency worker’s car. He wasn’t nervous about it, god no; what’s the point of being nervous about them abandoning you when it was just a matter of time anyways? So far, everyone who’d picked him out of the little online catalog had returned him like damaged goods, and at thirteen, there wasn’t much of a hope for successful adoption anyways. No loving couple wanted a bouncing baby teenager in their house, with previous trauma and a jaded attitude towards life in general, and there weren’t many other people who were looking to adopt. It was more of an excuse for the agency to get him out of the group foster home for a little, free up a space for a younger kid, and he knew that. He respected it, in a way; why not advertise the best, cutest kids you had on offer, and put the shitty ones where potential parents couldn’t see them, right? They’d never sent him to a hotel or anything like that, so it wasn’t too bad to live with a family for a couple weeks before they realized they already had a social hierarchy that he didn’t fit into anywhere and called the agency again to ask for a refund. So, yeah, Bubble Pop time.

Eventually, the car came to a halt at a place that wasn’t a red light or a stop sign, so Dave glanced up from his phone to see what the deal was. They had arrived; the faceless, nameless agent got out of the car, and walked briskly over to meet a man on the driveway, bundle of paperwork already prepared. It was somewhat out of the ordinary for it to just be the guy, not the happily married wife or the already adopted or biological children, but they probably had work or school or whatever normal people did right now. The agent handed him the paperwork, looked back and noticed Dave watching them, and motioned for him to get out of the car and come meet his “new dad”, or something like that. Dave dutifully unbuckled his seatbelt and opened the side door, lazily striding over to the man and the agent, and then  
He heard the sound of an approaching vehicle from behind, too late. He wasn’t paying attention. He was in the middle of the street and he wasn’t paying attention and-  
The man moved inhumanly fast, blowing the papers into the agent’s face; one second he was there, the next he was behind Dave, pushing him to the side and diving the other way. Dave was knocked to the ground, felt his knees scrape on the pavement with a sting, and watched the truck drive by without a care in the world. Adrenaline filling his veins with a chilling rush, he got to his feet, hiding how shaky his knees were, and looked over to see the agent with a hand over their mouth and the man pressed to the side of the agency’s car. He walked across the street towards them, looking both ways first, and arrived just in time to see the man- wearing cool shades, was he always wearing those shades?- hefting his bag of stuff from the trunk of the car.

“Hell of a way to meet a new kid, huh? I’m D. Welcome home.” Those words rang a bit hollow, considering two out of the past three homes he’d been in had said the same thing, but after a near-death experience, Dave was willing to let that slide. D seemed nice enough, and he clearly hadn’t meant anything hurtful, so instead of his usual unimpressed stoicism, Dave offered a half-smile, before opening the back side door to grab his phone charger and backpack of extra stuff from the back seat. When he was done, he carefully walked around the car and up the driveway to the agent, who had clearly recovered from seeing one of their charges in harm’s way and was giving the same bored paperwork spiel as always. D, clearly not listening, waited for a break in their monotony, and used the opportunity to graciously accept the paperwork packet, saying he’d get to it right away. After a final goodbye and exchange of numbers, so D could make the call to the case worker when Dave “didn’t work out for our family”, the agent was off, and Dave was alone with his new legal guardian on his driveway.

“Yo, man, mind if we go inside? I gotta set this little bundle of joy down-” D gestured with the hand he was holding the paperwork in- “and you gotta get settled in. I have a room I cleared out for you specifically, but if you want a different one, I can probably move my shit elsewhere.” Seconds after realizing his swear, he amended it with a “Uh, I mean, um. You aren’t going to report me to the caseworker for that, are you?” Dave shook his head noncommittally, and followed D inside.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dave's picked quite a bit up over the years. He's just not used to people actually listening when he speaks.

“Welcome to el casa Strider.”    
“ _ La _ casa,” Dave mumbled under his breath.

“Wait, what?” Dave prepared himself to just say  _ never mind, you didn’t hear me, clearly, nobody does and the ones who can don’t care _ , but then D followed with “God, dude, high school Spanish clearly wears off eventually. I could have sworn casa was masculine.”

“Ends in an -a. Feminine noun.” Dave replied automatically, still mostly to himself.

“Well, learn something new every day, I guess. La casa Strider. Come on in, take your shoes off if you care to-” D punctuated this statement by kicking off his own shoes- “but don’t feel like you gotta. Don’t really care much either way.” Dave decided to keep his red Converse on, and followed D into the main room. It was somewhat of an odd floor plan, with a small room to the side of the entrance, and a little hallway to the main kitchen/dining room/living room area. It was cluttered but not filthy; there were papers strewn across the table and dishes in the drying rack, but the counters were cleaned off, and the television was blissfully silent. Dave could only stand and stare for a second before hearing the creak of the stairs and following D up to the second floor.

As he climbed the stairs- there were twelve of them, he internally noted- he saw D gesturing to a door with the hand he had the paperwork in.

“Sorry, hands are full, I really should have put this down downstairs, uh. Mind helping me out a little?” Dave let him step to the side, and opened the door for him, stepping back to let him walk in first. After a moment of confusion at the withdrawal, D entered the room, and Dave followed. It was cleaner than the rest of the house, with a twin bed set up in the corner on a white bedframe. Across from the bed was a desk, with a computer, and a door, presumably to a closet. There was a beanbag sitting next to the end of the bed, and two windows at the far side opened to give a decent view of the street, devoid of cars for the time being. D set down Dave’s bag on the bed and turned to him with something resembling a smile.

“New room. Again, if you don’t like it, we can find a different place to set you up,” he offered.

“Nah. ‘S fine,” Dave replied quietly.

“Okay, chill. You can get unpacked, or whatever you gotta do. You know more about moving in than me. Dinner’s probably gonna be around 5 or 6, I thought we could order pizza to celebrate, if you’re down.” D turned to walk out of the room.

“Cool. When’s the wife getting home?”

“Sorry, what?” D stopped and turned back to him, clearly listening more than Dave thought he was.

“You’ve got a wife, and maybe some kids, right? Agency doesn’t usually let anyone besides married couples adopt,” Dave elaborated.

“Nope. Just you and me, little man.” Dave was about to bristle at the ‘little man’ remark, but D was out of the room and closing the door behind him before he could show his displeasure. Well, kinda weird that they’d let a single guy who couldn’t be much older than his early thirties adopt, much less adopt a thirteen-year-old, but Dave wasn’t going to question it now; he had some unpacking to do. Not, like, putting his clothes away in the closet or anything, just plugging in his phone- the essentials- and exploring whatever this computer had to offer. He turned it on to see a startup screen reading  _ 3:07 pm _ and a sign in button. No password, awesome. After taking a quick look through the program list- all the defaults and nothing else, he must have just set this up before Dave arrived- he downloaded his favorite Pesterchum client from Google and waited for the download and setup process to finish.

Two hours til dinnertime. He could make it count.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> let's fuckin GO i'm scheduling these chapters and saving them to post in advance. adhd ain't got shit on me.  
> anyways, thoughts on chapters being shorter (around this length) vs. longer (maybe twice this length)? i'm enjoying doing smaller vignettes into their life, but if people want longer chaps i'll be happy to listen. make your opinions on the chapter (and the length issue) heard in the comments!


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> dave has dinner

Dinner was, in a word, weird.   
Dave had gotten used to adjusting to new places pretty easily, but D seemed awkward, almost like he’d never welcomed a teenage boy into his house and then had dinner one-on-one with him before. The pizza was good, at least- D said the place he ordered it was close enough to deliver to their door, and the crust was thick enough to be doughy but not undercooked, just how Dave liked it. He’d have to see if it was a chain or just a local thing, because he wanted to eat this pizza every time he had pizza ever for the rest of his life.   
After dinner, D offered to “like, watch some TV together?”, to which Dave had replied that he didn’t really like TV much, omitting the fact that the reason he didn’t watch much was because half his families wouldn’t have let him within ten feet of anything he could break, including a very expensive television. D, for all his dinner awkwardness and general incompetence at small talk, gave Dave plenty of space to go up to his room and spend the night video calling with John. That was nice; there had been families who made him spend all his time bonding with them, and families that straight-up refused him internet access, so talking to his best friend again was a welcome point of stability.   
John had been there for Dave since they were way too young to be using the Internet, matched up through a pen-pal program through their schools. When Dave inevitably moved, he kept John’s address, and John didn’t much question why he was writing from a different place. Once they got online, Dave explained his whole situation, and John was cool with it, which was a relief. Even if it had been months since they’d had a chance to talk, John would respond like he always did, asking him about his day and life in general. It felt nice to have a normal friend, or at least one that pretended Dave skipping out on him for indefinite amounts of time was normal. He’d never managed to keep in touch with friends from any of the various schools he’d attended, since he moved districts a lot and didn’t have much of an excuse to talk to many of them without shared classes and homework tying them together. He’d talked briefly with some of John’s other internet pen pals, but it never went further than a few messages, and Dave got too jealous of John having other friends to talk to them that much. God, what a shitty friend he was, for being angry at John for having other friends like any normal kid should.  
Once John logged off for the night (well, made Dave log off, because Dave was an hour ahead of John and he cared about Dave enough to make him go to bed at a reasonable time) Dave was left, yet again, alone in his room. He had another brief interaction with D to ask where the bathroom was, then showered, put on his pajamas, and got situated in the twin bed. (Not his twin bed, the twin bed. This wasn’t home, this would never be home-) He set his phone alarm for eight in the morning and drifted into blissfully dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> yooo i'm back :) i have gotten so into so many fandoms since i posted this fic for the first time but i'm determined to finish this. i care about dave. so much

**Author's Note:**

> i've got quite a bit more of this written, but it isn't finished yet by any means. new updates will come out hopefully no less than once a week, but i might put this fic on the backburner if i have other things i need to do- school comes to mind. i'll post what i have done and then go from there, i guess!


End file.
